Friday 14, January 2022

Mid-month review

This month is half way through already. Some trends are becoming clear. The most dramatic one is that inflation is going up rapidly in the USA and in Europe. Mostly, this seems to be supply chain disruption as a result of a switch from …

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Monday 10, January 2022

What would the Fed do?

The Fed is the church of markets, and J Powell its high priest. How the Fed reacts to events, especially how it reacts to market movements, is the most important driver of markets. Since 2000 the Fed has demonstrated its willingness …

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Wednesday 5, January 2022

It’s mostly fiscal

Shows how actually giving people money to spend makes a difference to the real economy. As opposed to the Fed encouraging banks to swap their holding of one government liability (Treasury bills) for another (reserves).

This has had a big impact on …

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Tuesday 4, January 2022

Interest rates, futures curves, backwardations, waves

Interest rates underpin all of financial modelling. They link cashflows today to cashflows in the future. The “risk free rate” is a key parameter in all derivatives valuation. One of the odd things about the fundamental equation of finance, the …

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Saturday 1, January 2022

Welcome to the new year

I’ve been reading “Diary of am MP’s Wife” by Sasha Swire. The book is amusing in a gossip column sort of way, but it also makes a few more serious points about politics. What is interesting is how shallow …

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Friday 31, December 2021

It’s New Year’s Eve, so I’m not writing much, but I thought I’d share some thoughts.

Weekly Wrap

All the US indices are down, as is the dollar. Oddly, the VIX is down too. In this sense the market has been risk …

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Thursday 30, December 2021

The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed

New England is a lodestar. It shows ordinary people like me where the world is going. It is achingly hip, and green, and averse to fossil fuels and nuclear power. It doesn’t like …

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Monday 20, December 2021

Turkish Lira and Wrap

The Turkish Lira shot up 18% today after Erdogan unveiled a series of measures to stabilize the currency. I haven’t had time to read the details of what he is proposing, but I somehow doubt that it will work. However, he …

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Sunday 19, December 2021

Tweets

W00t! The FBI loses all the evidence that would explain what Epstein was up to. Amaaaazing.

FBI loses all the CDs seized in Epstein case. 🥴 pic.twitter.com/C9sKhrvB1o

— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) December 18, 2021

pic.twitter.com/IyjKQCKitH

— JC Oviedo (@JCOviedo6) December 19, 2021 …

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Friday 17, December 2021

$CVNA (or, as some would prefer, $CVNAQ)

Lol, $CVNA hasn't financed yet in spite of $700m of estimated cash burn next year (99% of Q3 equity).

Could it be because no investment bank wants to sell such toxic paper to their clients? Or is the …

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